1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of commercial transaction systems, and more particularly to a secure commercial transaction systems, methods and computer program products, wherein a multi-feature transactional device enhances user safety, provides a means of user identify verification, minimizes risk of fraud, facilitates record keeping, and functions as a data collection tool for target marketing.
2. Prior Art
The present use of ATM cards, debit cards, credit cards, and the like create potential personal security hazards. For example, users at ATM machines can become robbery victims by having criminals force them to withdraw money. In addition, the loss of such cards can allow criminals to endlessly use the cards without knowledge to the true owner. Further, fraudulent use of counterfeit cards is becoming increasingly prevalent, wherein card numbers and other identifying information printed on cards is furtively collected and utilized to create counterfeit cards.
In addition to such security hazards, users of ATM cards, and the like typically received paper (soft) receipts when executing in-person commercial transactions. That is, a common occurrence in everyday life is the issuance and acceptance of a paper receipt as evidence of a commercial transaction. Such receipts include vouchers, sales slips, signed notices, paid bills, proofs of payment, statements, sales tickets, admittance, and cash register tapes. These items are used almost everywhere to provide a consumer and a merchant with some means of recording a commercial transaction to ensure that rights and responsibilities regarding the commercial transaction are honored between the parties through the transaction.
Currently, consumers, and merchants use paper receipts that must be retained not only until the purchase value has been received by the customer but also for future problems regarding claims and responsibilities with regards to the commercial transaction. For the consumer, maintaining many receipts over a period of time may be difficult. For the merchant, the issuance of a paper receipt almost guarantees that the merchant must create and maintain other paper records that match the paper receipt.
For example, in a typical purchasing transaction, a consumer may travel to a home supply store to buy building materials. After paying for some merchandise, the consumer will receive a paper receipt as proof of purchase. If the consumer has purchased some bulky items, such as lumber, the consumer may be required to proceed to a different location to pick up the lumber, such as a loading dock at the back of the store or at a nearby lumber yard. The consumer's purchase receipt serves as evidence of payment for the lumber and of the right to delivery of the lumber from an agent of the home supply store. Once the consumer has tendered the receipt, the agent may physically mark the paper receipt to show that the lumber has been delivered, and the lumber is given to the consumer.
The use of paper receipts in this situation creates inconveniences. The consumer must ensure that the paper receipt is not lost before the lumber is picked up, which is usually not difficult as the lumber would probably be picked up in a short amount of time. However, the consumer is required to keep the receipt in case the consumer desires to return any defective merchandise. As some stores may allow the return of certain merchandise after several months, the consumer may need to file the paper receipt in a special place to ensure that it is not lost.
The merchant also confronts inconveniences. The home supply store's purchase transaction system may update inventory records immediately upon the sale of the merchandise, even though not all of the merchandise has been removed from the stock. If the purchase transaction system is set up so that a lumber yard manager must enter a transaction into an electronic terminal to update the inventory records, and the lumber yard manager fails to do so, then the inventory records will not properly match the actual inventory.
As is familiar to most consumers, the maintenance and transfer of paper receipts for such purposes may be both cumbersome and annoying. Therefore, it would be useful to have a system, method, and computer program product for electronically transferring, inter alia, proofs of purchase or other documents related to commercial transactions. It would be further advantageous to have a system, method, and computer program product for transferring and storing detailed information concerning the status and details of a particular commercial transaction.
Additional disadvantages exist relative to currently available transaction cards. For example, a frequent card user is personally saddled with the task of collecting endless printed receipts if crosscheck of bank or credit statements is desired. Moreover, in most instances, even if the user does not desire a print receipt, the receipt is generated nonetheless. Countless tons of environmental waste are undoubtedly generated by ATM's alone.